The Word to Increase

Well, good morning to everybody, everywhere, that is watching us here, that is at any of our campuses, that may be watching us online. We're so grateful to be together this morning, and thank God for all of you. I remember when I was little, I remember coming out of my room. I'm a little blurry about it 'cause I was pretty young. I remember coming out of my room and I came out crawling, not because I was not old enough to walk, I was plenty old enough to walk and run and do all those things, but I came out crawling because my legs were aching so bad, and I came crawling and I found my mom and I was like, "Something is really wrong with my legs." And she literally looks at me like it's nothing. I think I need to go to the hospital. And she says, "Ah, it's growing pains." And I'm looking at her like, "What? I'm just a little kid. I'm not able to use my legs right now, and I'm crawling in here, and you're giving me the blow off like it's growing pains?" She probably also told me to, you know, "Here's some chicken soup and some Ritz crackers," 'cause in the South that's how we fixed everything. I don't know, was that true for you growing up? Like, that's literally how we fixed every single thing. It didn't matter what it was. You got a cold, chicken noodle soup and Ritz crackers. Or saltine crackers or whatever, right? You've got the black plague, chicken noodle soup and some crackers, you know, and that fixes it. Growing pains, chicken noodle soup and some crackers, right? That's gonna fix everything. I just remember thinking to myself, "Man, this is kind of painful," but my mom, she didn't give me a medical explanation. She just said, "This is just what happens and there's a little bit of pain, but it's 'cause your body's growing. And because your body's growing, there's gonna be a little bit of pain, but you're gonna be glad that's the case because you're actually gonna grow instead of stay the same size. And it's a good thing. Your bones are growing and everything's growing, and sometimes it's a little painful." And I thought to myself, "Yeah, it is a little bit painful." Isn't it funny that the words pain and change rhyme? That like, the fact that we have to change and that sometimes change is associated with pain, and those things actually rhyme, seems a little bit ironic to me. We know that to be true because whenever things are changing, sometimes it's a little bit painful. Maybe you had to change what was going on from a dietary sense because of your health, and that was a little bit painful, right? You're like, "What do you mean not have dairy," you know? "What do you mean I can't eat this," right? And so it's a little bit painful. Or maybe it happened in your business because the nature of the market changed and you've had to change what you're doing as a business so that you can compete in the market that you're in. And that change, maybe you had to make some structural changes or you had to make some directional changes and that was a little bit painful for you. It affects everybody. The pain of change affects every single person, whether it's an individual or a sports team or a business or a family or a church. It happens to everybody. And in the early church we actually see that they felt some growing pains because of what God was doing in and through them. They experienced some of these same things because those growing pains tended to show some problems that were actually occurring. And we look at that about the time we get to Acts 6, and we're gonna be in Acts 6 in just a moment. But prior to getting there, I wanna remind you of what was happening in the early church. The early church, as you remember, was right then at that time still only in Jerusalem, right? That's where God had come at Pentecost by the Holy Spirit and reached so many. And 3,000 were added in one single day at the Day of Pentecost. And now they were all dwelling there in Jerusalem, and they were in that location only predominantly when we're talking about the early church. And the early church was obviously devoted to a number of things. Most specifically, they were devoted to praying as the people of God, as the new believers in Jesus. They were committed together to be constantly in prayer. We looked at that last week in Acts 1. But we see the same thing when we get to Acts 2. In Acts 2, it says this, beginning of verse 42, it says, "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and they ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." So that's what we see in Acts 2, this commitment, this devotion to the apostles teaching and to fellowship and the breaking of bread. And very specifically to prayer, which is what we're giving our attention to over the next number of weeks looking in the Book of Acts. By the time we get to Acts 6, the church has continued in its growth. It's a remarkable thing that has happened in the early church, and it continues to develop and to grow. Certainly the church was made up of thousands. We already know that because on day one, there were thousands, right? But probably by the time we get to Acts 6, there may have been tens of thousands, maybe 10,000 or even tens of thousands, that were a part of this early church in Jerusalem. And then what we see is we see them coming face-to-face with some growing pains that are happening in Acts 6. And what I'm going to do is I'm gonna take a moment and I'm gonna outline chapter six, at least the first seven verses. I'm gonna outline that for us. And then after we understand what's going on in the passage and we take this particular instance in the life of the early church, after that, then we're gonna ask a question about how can we then now aim our praying based on what we're learning from this event in the life of the early church, all right? So I'm gonna outline this for us, and I'm using Ps if it helps you to remember things. I don't often alliterate when I'm doing things, but I'm gonna use kind of Ps that'll help you kind of remember what's going on, all right? Here's the first and that's the problem, all right? Because there is a problem that's going on here in Acts 6 beginning in verse one. Here's what it says. "In those days when the number of disciples was increasing," see they're experiencing what? Growth, they're experiencing growing pains. "When the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food." Now let me tell you just for a moment what this problem was all about. The church continued to grow, right? And that was a wonderful thing. That's a great thing. But now you've got both Jews, Hebraic Jews, that means Hebrew Jews, right, and you've got Hellenistic Jews, Hellenistic Jews means Jews basically who had embraced Greek language and Greek culture, right? They were Hellenists. So you've got Hellenistic Jews that come to faith in Jesus. You've got the traditional Jewish people that have come to faith in Jesus. And now they're all together in this new thing that's called the church, right? Now, this is a really remarkable thing because both Hellenistic Jews and Hebraic Jews, who'd now come to faith in Jesus, were both actually giving of their stuff and giving of their possessions and putting it into the big pot to help take care of one another. But now what had happened is that some of the Hellenistic Jewish widows who had come to faith in Jesus were being overlooked in the distribution of food. Now let me pause you right there. What happened was is that more than likely some of these widows that were being cared for now by the church had now come off the rolls of the temple and now were being cared for by the new kind of people of God, the body of Christ, the church. Maybe some of them didn't have family. Maybe they had come in for the festivals and the time of Pentecost and the feast of unleavened bread that happened and all of that, and then they came to faith in Jesus and they had heard the Word of God, and then they stayed in Jerusalem, and maybe there were family that were elsewhere and they weren't able to be cared for. Whatever the case may be, there are these widows that are not being cared for and there's some being overlooked. And specifically the ones being overlooked were the ones who had embraced Greek language and culture. Now, that's an interesting thing, isn't it? Because what it tells you immediately is that there were problems in the early church, just like there are problems in the modern church, that they were no different than anyone else, that they were imperfect like everyone else. And probably some of those who came from a traditional Jewish background were not altogether happy that people that were Jews had actually abandoned Jewish culture and Jewish language and had embraced Greek culture and Greek language. And maybe they were not happy about that. And so they overlooked these widows in the distribution of food. And so the Jewish widows were getting fed, they were getting taken care of, but the Hellenistic widows were not being taken care of near as well. Now, it's a remarkable thing and obviously it's a problem that was occurring right here in the early church. So what happened? Well, there's a proposal, all right? Told you there'd be a few Ps here as we outline the text, right? There's a proposal that's made. Here's what it says in verses two through four. "So the 12 gathered all the disciples together and said, 'It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the Word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the Word.'" Now, when this particular verse starts, you see it, it says, "So the 12," right? You remember who the 12 are, right? They're the apostles. But some of you that are really bright, bright, bright Bible students are going, "Hey, wait a second, wait a second. Aren't there only 11? 'Cause Judas, like, that's not happening." Judas isn't even alive at this point. So some of you're going, "Wait a minute, he just said the 12. What?" Well, if you remember back in Acts 1, you see Peter actually had in mind this idea as they were praying and gathering together and recognizing, by the way, that they were missing one now. Peter knew that the representation of the apostles needed to be 12, not 11, because he understood the picture of the new people of God. Because originally the people of God, Israel, were the 12 tribes of Israel. And Peter knew that this needed to be something that also occurred with the apostles, picturing the new people of God. So do you remember what happened in Acts 1? It says, "So they nominated two men to be an apostle: Joseph called Barsabbas, also known as Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed, 'Lord, you know everyone's heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs.'" It's pretty straightforward. "Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the 11 apostles," right? So to be an apostle, you had to have been there for the whole ministry of Jesus and seen the resurrection. They qualified that in Acts 1. And there were a couple of men that fit that categorization, and so they took it to the Lord in prayer, they left it to the Lord. You say, "Well, they kinda cast lots for that. That seems weird." That was really common at that point. They just said, "We're gonna pray and then we're gonna leave this to the Lord, and he's gonna determine this for us." And he did. And Matthias was named among the 12. And so when we get to Acts 6, they're referred to as the 12 apostles, Matthias being one of those. Some of you thought, "No, Paul's the 12th apostle." Paul's not even saved yet in Acts 6. Paul's still persecuting the church. See, what you have is you have the 12 apostles of Jesus, and then you have Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. He's in a category of his own. He is the apostle to the Gentiles. These are the 12 apostles of Jesus. And Matthias was added to this group. Now, what happened is this, is that the apostles or the 12 gathered the disciples. How many disciples? I don't have any idea. He gathered a bunch of them, I don't know how many there were. He gathered them and he made the case, they made the case, that they couldn't do everything. They couldn't take care of all of these widows properly. They couldn't wait on tables and do all the ministry that they had been called to do. There was no way they could do that or else the ministry would suffer. In fact, it reminds me what they're talking about is they said, "We've gotta prioritize the ministry of prayer and the Word. We can't just give ourselves to waiting tables." By the way, they weren't saying that waiting tables was a bad thing. They knew that this needed to happen and it needed to happen well. But they knew that they couldn't be the ones that were doing it. And I can't help but imagine that their minds, the apostles' minds, were going back to Exodus 18 where Moses is in front of the people of Israel and it says night and day they lined up from here to forever and they just had to see Moses. Everything just had to come to Moses. My toenail hurts, I've gotta come to Moses, you know? Moses, I need you to pray for my grandmother. I gotta go to Moses. I gotta go to Moses and ask him about this problem or that problem or this issue or this recommendation. Everything comes to Moses and the line just gets really long. And then finally Moses' father-in-law came to him, Jethro, and he said, "Hey man, this isn't good for you and it's not good for them. It's not good because it's gonna cost us." He says, "You know what you need to do? I would recommend that you appoint leaders of thousands, leaders of hundreds, leaders of tens, and you let them deal with certain things, and then the issues that affect the whole of the nation need to come to you. But you can break this out." And by the way, he said that, "What you need to do, Moses, is you need to make sure that you are an intermediary between them and God, the ministry of prayer. And you need to teach them about all the things that I have spoken to you, the ministry of the Word." And they could not, and Jethro was saying, "You cannot put aside the ministry of prayer and the Word for the sake of all of these other tasks." The same thing was happening here, and the apostles made this proposal to the disciples and said, "We cannot marginalize our ministry of prayer and the Word for the sake of waiting on tables." Now, waiting on tables was a noble task, and it was very important that it occurred. They weren't speaking negatively of this. In fact, they're gonna propose a solution. So what they did is the apostles proposed that the disciples choose seven men from among them who are full of wisdom and full of the Holy Spirit. And that as they did that, they would then be charged with caring for the distribution of food and meeting the needs that were present there. They would be charged with that. Now, what's interesting is that this is the seed bed for where we get the idea of deacons. This is the seed bed for that. But this isn't specifically categorizing this group of people in the office of Deacon. In fact, Luke doesn't use the Greek noun to describe the office of Deacon. What he describes is the functions they were playing, table waiting, serving, right? But this would ultimately be the same kind of word, diakonos, the same kind of word that would mean servant or deacon that Paul would actually talk about utilizing in the body of Christ for the good of people. And what they were doing is making sure that they were people who were serious about the unity of the body and caring for the needs of the body. So that was the proposal, right? And then thirdly, there's the presentation. You like all the Ps? Are they helping? I'm outlining the text. It's just maybe a way for you to remember it, the presentation. Here's what it says in verse five and six. "This proposal pleased the whole group of disciples. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them." Here's what's interesting about this presentation. It's because the disciples actually chose extraordinarily wisely. You know what the disciples weren't? They weren't culture blind. They weren't. They knew that the problem that they were dealing with is that there were Hellenistic Jewish widows who were being overlooked in the distribution. And so you know what the disciples did, most of whom were still Hebraic Jewish Christians? Do you know what they did? They appointed Hellenistic believers to be the ones who oversaw all of this. When you read these names, Stephen, Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, they're all Greek names, all of 'em, every single one of 'em. So wisely, what they did by the leadership of the Spirit is they did this. Now, one of them, actually Nicolas, he was a convert to Judaism. He wasn't even originally a Jew. He was a convert to Judaism. So they took people who were not by nature Hebraic Jews and they put them in place to help so that what they did was beautiful and unifying and helpful in the body of Christ. And then they presented these men to the apostles. And what the apostles did is they laid their hands on them and prayed for them. Now, in other places in the Book of Acts, when the apostles are laying hands on, they're imparting the Spirit. But these men, the Bible tells us, were already full of the Spirit. So what they were doing is the apostles were basically laying their hands on them to separate them out for this particular task. They were commissioning them for this particular task. And then what's the product or the outcome, right, of all of this? Here's what it says in verse number seven. "So the Word of God spread." That's an interesting word. "The Word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith." Now, go back if you will. "the Word of God spread, and the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased." If you remember the actual creation mandate, it was to do what? Be fruitful and multiply, right? The creation mandate was to be fruitful and to multiply. And Luke chooses some language that echoes that very creation mandate. He chooses language that says, "the Word of God spread and the number of disciples increased." And what he's reminding us of is that the people of God have always been given this mandate for fruitfulness and multiplication. And in fact, what's interesting about that is that the people of God, named Israel specifically, that God actually built this into his covenant with Israel. He actually told Israel, "This is what I want for you." There's a number of places where he does this in the Book of Jeremiah and elsewhere. But in Leviticus it says this, in Leviticus 26, "I will look on you," God says, "with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers, and I will keep my covenant with you." God actually built this in to the covenant that he had made with the people of God. And here Luke is reminding us that for the people of God, what should happen is that there should be growth, that there should be fruitfulness, that there should be increase in the people of God. And that's exactly what was going on in the early church. "the Word of God spread and the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly." Even priests, by the way, he says, just as a little throw on at the end. And a large number of priests became obedient to the faith. It's interesting because the Word of God spread in likely places and in unlikely places. It's a really remarkable thing. So when we see this in the early church and we understand what's going on here, we're reminded of the leadership of the Spirit and the wisdom God gave to the early church. So what can we take from this? The events that occurred right here, what can we take from it? What we can take is some prayers for our own church, that we can pray as a body based out of this text and what it teaches us in principle, what it reminds us of. We can learn how to pray for our own church. Let me show you a few prayers. Here's the first, that we would handle problems with wisdom. Now, some of you read that and you read the we as me. The we is we. It's not me. That we would handle problems with wisdom. Wisdom is given by the Spirit of God, and certainly the Spirit of God gave wisdom in this particular context. And I'll tell you why we need wisdom: because Satan is always trying to create problems. It's just what he does, right? His goal is chaos, his goal is deceit. He lies, it's his mother tongue. This is what he does. And when we look at the early church, what Satan was doing early on, if you go back a couple chapters into chapter four and chapter five, what you'll see is that Satan was working toward the persecution of the leaders. He was trying to persecute the apostles. And ultimately that would result in the persecution of believers as well. That's what he was endeavoring to do. But you know what the apostles did? Led by the Spirit, they had a wisdom of courage to be able to continue preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Thank God for that, right? And so Satan sometimes will come in persecution. And then in chapter five, you also see that Satan tried to come in through hypocrisy and lying in the body of Christ. You remember the names Ananias and Sapphira? They were giving to the church, but they lied about what they gave and how they gave, and then they lied to the Holy Spirit. And Peter said, "You shouldn't have done that." And they're dead, both of them. And it sobered the church up in a hurry because God's serious about the church's holiness and purity and authenticity, and Satan tried to sow seeds through lying and hypocrisy in the body of Christ. Satan tries all of this. And do you know what Satan's trying here in Acts 6? He's trying to take a good thing and make it the main thing. He's trying to take a good thing and take them off of their mission. "If I could just get the apostles to quit praying and to quit spreading the Word, and could get them having to do regular tasks of taking care of these kinds of things, then great." Mission accomplished as far as Satan's concerned. But God gave the apostles and the disciples who were here Spirit-given wisdom not to be able to sidestep what they were supposed to do. And what they did is they appointed, listen to this, they appointed unifiers. They appointed unifiers, because you know God is serious about the unity of his church. He's serious about the unity of his children. He's serious about the unity of his body. In fact, Jesus talked about it as the great apologetic as to how the world will know, Father, that you sent the Son is because they are one just as we are. You see, he's really serious about unity, and they were appointed some unifiers in that context. But I wanna make sure you understand something really clearly. We're all called to be agents of unity, all of us. Do you remember what Paul wrote in Ephesians 4? He said this, writing to the whole body, "Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." Do you know what he doesn't say? "Make every effort to create the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." We don't have to create our unity, friends, we already have it. What we have to work toward is keeping it, because God has given us this unity in Christ based on what Jesus has done in dying for us, Jew and Gentile. That now because we are one in Jesus Christ, there is a unity that has been formed and we have to fight to keep it. So what we should pray for our church is that we would handle problems with wisdom. Problems are going to occur in the body of Christ. Do you know why? 'Cause you're here and I'm here. In the Words of the great theologian, whoever it was in the rap world, "Mo money, mo problems." And you could say it this way, "mo people, more problems." That's just how it is, right? Where there are people, there will be problems. Why? Because there are people. Because there are people. Sometimes people don't know how to behave. Sometimes people are having a bad day. Sometimes people have given themselves over to the work of Satan unknowingly and they are being used as a divisive tool. I'm not even talking about or thinking about anything in particular. I'm just talking about what the Word is teaching us, right? So I'm not like grinding this secret ax, you know, kind of going, "Oh, there's something he's saying." I'm really not. I'm just saying this is who we should be. We should be unifiers as the people of God, unity around the gospel, unity around Jesus, unity around the cross and resurrection. This is who we are and what we should be doing. And we need to work hard at having Spirit-given wisdom in dealing with any problems that emerge for us at any point. We should pray that for our church. Secondly, we should pray that we would continually prioritize as we organize. We should pray for our church that we would continually prioritize as we organize. This is what the apostles did. You know, they realized, "Hey, the church is growing. There's some growing pains, there's things associated with it, things are changing, and we've got these things that are going on now, and there's a problem that's emerged." And what they could have done is they could have organized themselves into this, but instead they stopped and they said, "There's a priority here." And the priority is the ministry of prayer and the ministry of the Word, and we cannot sideline that. Whatever else we do, we cannot sideline that. That must be at the center because that's functionally what we're doing for the mission of God, seeing the Word of God increase and spread so that every man and every woman and every child might hear and see the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They were centered on the mission, and so they structured toward that end. They prioritized before they organized. And I wanna tell you, friends, this is a big area of need in churches all over the world and certainly in the United States, with which I have much more familiarity. Back when I was doing some additional schooling, some doctoral work, I ended up writing my dissertation on the development of an intentionally missiological ecclesiology. I hope you enjoyed that. What I ended up writing on ultimately was this. So to kind of break that down pretty simply, is that sometimes churches are structured to inhibit the mission, not to help it. And so if I were to ask the question, and I did, if I were to ask the question largely in the United States to pastors and leaders and say, "Hey, what's the mission of the church?" Listen, they're mostly gonna get it straight. It's gonna have something to do with the Great Commission, right? It's gonna be somewhere in that range. It may not be the exact words, but it's gonna be something along that line, right? People come to our church, they're like, "What's the mission?" And it's like, "Hey, go in the atrium, look on the wall," right? It's right there. It's humongous. Some of you're going, "Really?" If you haven't looked up, what's going on? It's been there for years and years and years, right? Like, we know what the mission is. But here's the thing. In many cases I would ask churches, "Are you able to get after that? Are you able to do it?" Or I would say, "Here's the mission. What are you doing about that?" And they'll say, "Well, we're structured this way, therefore these are the things we can do." As opposed to saying, "That's the mission. How do we structure to do that?" So what we've done is we've put the caboose as the engine and the engine as the caboose. We've said, "We're gonna start with structure, therefore this is what we can do," instead of saying, "We're gonna start with the mission, therefore we'll structure to accomplish it." You see, if we do not prioritize the reality of the mission of God and what God has called us to, then all the organization in the world doesn't really matter if we're not working toward the mission of God. Some churches are incredibly organized and not moving forward in the mission that God's called them to. But they are super organized. They've got sweet charts. But it's not seeing the impact from a mission standpoint that God would want for us to see. And so I wanna just remind us that what we can learn from here and what we can pray is that as a church we would continually prioritize as we organize. In other words, we would always have the mission of God leading for us. We would always have the mission of God out front for us, even as we structure and organize to be able to do what God has called us to be able to do. We've done that over times past. It's why we have spent time thinking about raising people up and launching people out and planting other churches and planting other campuses, because the mission is about every man, woman, and child within our region. It's why we have campuses, two in Niagara County and two in Erie County, because in Erie and Niagara County, there's 1.2 million people that we're trying to reach. It's why we've planted over 40 works that are not us. We just helped to plant. Either we or in partnership, we have helped to plant over 40 churches in our region. Why? Because the mission is the boss. Because that came from the Boss, right? We kinda have a little running joke that we say internally. We say, "The mission is the senior pastor. It tells us what to do because that's what comes from God," right? Jesus is the head of his church and the mission he's given us is we have to look at that and say, "This is what we wanna do," so we have to pray that we'll continually prioritize as we organize. And I want you to pray. There's two specific things, church. I want you to pray about two specific things. We are, not only our leadership team but our board of overseers, are praying and strategizing toward, Lord willing, in the shorter term, in the next number of months, and we've talked about this at some members gatherings and stuff as well, so those members who attended those, you've already heard this, but I want you to pray with us as we structure deacons for each of our campuses who will be there to help and assist in some of the arenas of serving the body of Christ and caring for the body of Christ and being unifiers in the body of Christ. And so we're praying and we're strategizing toward that end and working toward that end even right now. And I want you to continue to pray with us about that. And secondarily, I also want you to pray very specifically at the CrossPoint campus. We believe that it would be in the best interest, and this is coming from us talking and praying and thinking with our leadership team and our board of overseers, that we think it would be in the best interest of this campus to have a campus pastor. Every other campus has a campus pastor, right? My role actually has to do with the whole. My role has to do with the whole of The Chapel, not just CrossPoint, it also has to do with Western New York in a larger sphere, and to some degree even the United States in a larger sphere. And we believe that God would be leading us to have a CrossPoint campus pastor who would give specific attention to this campus, just like there's specific attention to each of our other campuses and the context that they're in. Would you pray with us? Pray with us about that. That's not solved. There's nothing in the hopper. Just pray with us. See, part of what we need to do as the body of Christ is just lay it out there and say, "Pray." Let the people of God pray. And we'll do that in just a moment all together on every campus. But let me give you a third way that we can pray. Not only that we would handle problems with wisdom and that we would continually prioritize as we organize, but also that the Word of God would increase. We need to pray that the Word of God would increase. This was what was going on. This was the outcome that we see in Acts 6, right, when they were faced with a problem and they worked through it really well and they prioritized when they organized. And we see the Word of God increasing. The unity and the prayer led to this increase in the Word of God. And listen, I want you to pray specifically that it would increase in power. Now, need I remind you, the Word of God inherent in itself has power. Inherent in itself. Paul, remember what Paul said in the Book of Romans? "I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who hears and believes." Inherent in itself, this good news, this gospel that we proclaim about King Jesus, that the world is broken, but Jesus can make it right, that we are broken, but we can be reconciled to the Father through what Jesus has done, that God is holy and we are sinful, but God in his Son has come and shown up and lived a sinless life so that he could stand in the gap between God's holiness and our imperfections, and has taken upon himself the just and righteous wrath of God against sin on our behalf. And through his perfect substitutionary death and ultimately his resurrection, demonstrating that he satisfied the righteous requirements of God, we now by faith in Jesus can be reconciled to God. We can have our sins forgiven, we can be made new, and we can trust that the one that we have put our faith in is going to return and make all things new. Broken things will be much better. Everything is going to be transformed. Re-creation is coming and we have put our trust in Jesus toward that end. He is the King. He is the one to whom every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. This is the good news of the gospel. And that has power in and of itself, just by itself. I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of salvation to everyone who hears and believes. And the writer of Hebrews says, "The Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. And it cuts and it discerns every thought of every heart." We want the Word of God to spread in power. Let me ask you a question. You don't have to raise your hand, don't. I'm not trying to embarrass anybody, make anybody feel guilty. Maybe a little bit, but that's on you. Let me ask you a question. Did you ask God before you showed up today for the Word of God to work in power in your heart? Let me ask you a second question. Did you ask God when you showed up today to let the Word of God work in power in every hearer's heart? Because what if we did? What if we started to do that? What if we trusted that the same Spirit who inspired and superintended the Word of God would quicken the hearts of people? But instead, some of us come in dull and dead to the Word. Let's ask God to increase the Word of God in power but also in scope. Let's ask him to increase it in scope. In other words, what happened from Acts 6 moving forward is that the Word went out not just into Jerusalem, but it went beyond Jerusalem and it went beyond the apostles. Other brothers and sisters began talking about this and sharing this. In fact, some of these folks that were appointed to wait tables like Stephen, like Philip, they got to proclaim the Word of God as well. It's not just for people who do what I do, it's for all of us that get the opportunity to talk about the greatness of who Jesus is. And could we pray that the Word of God would increase in scope and go into both likely and unlikely places, just like it did here? So instead of just talking about this, we should pray about this. We've been doing this the last number of weeks. We're gonna do it again today. We're going to pray. And my hope is that you've got somebody around you, somebody nearby you, so you're not just sitting by yourself, and I'm gonna lead you through three prayer prompts on every campus. I'm gonna lead every campus through this for just a moment. And I'm just gonna ask you to pray along this line. And it's not just about read what's on the screen, like pray, and feel free, by the way, to pray out loud. I'm not talking about yelling and making a spectacle of yourself. Nobody should do that. I'm just saying open your mouth and speak. You should be able to do that in church. Open your mouth and speak and pray. This is what we do, okay? So I wanna give you three prayer prompts along these lines. We're literally praying out of Acts 6, okay? And I want you to take a few moments on each of them and pray. And after a period of time after I let you pray, then I'll tell you, "Hey, we've got another prayer prompt," and you'll look up on the screens and you'll see the second one and you'll continue along that line in praying. If you're super uncomfortable and you're just like, "This is death, I can't imagine opening my mouth and praying," well, then just say to somebody around you, "Hey, I'm gonna pray silently with you." That's okay too. But you should learn to be able to open your mouth and pray. You should. If you're a follower of Jesus, you should do that. Maybe you're not a follower of Jesus and it's kind of new to you. That's no problem. You can just say, "Hey, I'm gonna join you quietly, but I'm joining you." And that's great. We love you. Delighted that that's the case, all right? So first prayer prompt is this, Father, help us as a church to handle any problems with wisdom and for all of us to be agents of unity. Take some time around you and kind of pray along that line, and then I'll give you a second prompt in just a moment. I'm gonna give you a second prompt. Maybe somebody else in your group that would want to pray can do this. Pray along this line. Father, please help us by your Spirit to prioritize your mission as we organize ministry. All right, take some time to pray. Lastly, I would encourage you to pray along this line. Father, please allow for your Word to increase in power and in scope. Would you just pray that for just a few moments? Father, I thank you for the prayers of your people. I thank you for the wisdom of the Spirit. I thank you for your Word that reveals to us your heart, your nature, your activity among your people through the course of history and time. I pray that we would be faithful to learn from their example and that you would give us great grace as we together as your people pray these prayers for wisdom in dealing with anything that comes up that might want to distract us from the mission, for prioritizing the ministry of the Word and the ministry of prayer as we long to see the Word of God increase in power and in scope. Lord, we're not asking you to do the same exact thing in the exact same way as you did in the early church. We just want you to do what you want to do in your way, at your time, in your church, now. We thank you that we can come to you, and that Jesus, you've made a way for us to be able to come to the Father. And I pray you would hear the prayers of your people and we would be faithful to keep on praying and to keep on sharing the beauty of the good news of Jesus in the world that we live in. We trust you to do that in Jesus' name. Amen. Hey, before we're dismissed, it's possible that you may be here and have yet to put your faith or your trust in Jesus, the one who loves you, who died for you, who rose from the grave, who reconciles you to the Father, the only one who gives you the hope of eternal life and the only one who gives you the hope of making broken things better and recreating all things. And if that's never happened in your heart and in your life, then when we dismiss in just a moment, there'll be some folks that'll be standing right down here, some men and women. They'd love to take a moment and pray with you about that. Or maybe you just need somebody to pray with you. Maybe it's something specific in your life. You're already a believer in Jesus, but you need somebody to just take a moment and pray with you. And maybe you didn't get to bring it up in your group. Feel free, come, take one of them by the hand and do that. Or if you need to pray with somebody that's still sitting around you, you have the freedom to remain and to pray and to seek the Lord in that regard. You can pray for people in the atrium, you can pray for people out here. You can pray for people anywhere you want to. This is a house of prayer. This is what we can do. This is what we do, what we should do, right? So whatever it is that God is asking, however the Spirit is leading, I pray that you'll do what he asks, how he asks, when he asks. Father, we love you. We glorify you. We thank you for the kindness you've shown to us in Jesus our Savior. We pray you'd help us to be a people who are serious about the ministry of prayer and the ministry of the Word for your glory. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.